Home Again

We are fresh back from vacation.  After two weeks in Spain, we are home again and, for the first time, asking ourselves a question I thought I was incapable of uttering: are we getting too old for this?

It's not that we didn't enjoy our vacation, because we did.  We had wanted forever to see Spain.  We had two whole weeks there with friends we enjoy.  We spent months planning the trip and made a good long list of interests to indulge and places to see.  We booked ahead for hotels and trains so our waiting time and hopeless last-minute groping were held to almost zero.  We ate in little cafes and bars and I sampled as many pastry shops as I could manage.   (Any place ever occupied by the French, even for just a few years, is guaranteed to have pastries worth trying.)   We saw as much of what we wanted to see as erratic Spanish scheduling allowed.  We walked and walked and walked, which I love.  And yet....  we are so glad to be home.

We drove up our driveway on a sunny afternoon.  After a long, hot, almost droughty summer, it had been raining and our pastures were green.  Even in late October, we still had tomatoes and peppers in the garden.  Our chickens were out there digging up the beds; dirt was flying.  The donkeys and horse kicked up a ruckus when they saw us. The fat cat followed me to the barn to get his ears scratched.  There was a pile of mail, a ton of laundry.  The food not eaten by the housesitter had to be cleaned out of the fridge.  The place was filthy.  But the dishes in the dishwasher were clean and so were the sheets on our bed.  The laptop I missed so much in Spain was working.  I called my mom.  I dug potatoes and sweet potatoes from the garden and roasted them for supper with peppers and olive oil, Spanish style.  The next afternoon, the vet came out for fall shots and declared everybody ready for winter.  And we began to settle in.

Over the weekend we gave thanks for small pleasures.  We walked our property, inspecting, touching, metaphorically sniffing at stumps and peeing on posts, while our roots sank ever deeper into our southern soil. 

Tell me again why we go away?  Sometimes I can't remember.